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hands, to disinter the living. The wounded, as well as the sick who had escaped from the hospitals, were
laid on the banks of the small river Guayra. They found no shelter but the foliage of trees. Beds, linen to
dress the wounds, instruments of surgery, medicines, and objects of the most urgent necessity, were
buried under the ruins. Every thing, even food, was wanting during the first days. Water became alike
scarce in the interior of the city. The commotion had rent the pipes of the fountains; the falling in of the
earth had choaked up the springs that supplied them; and it became necessary, in order to have water, to
go down to the river Guayra, which was considerably swelled; and then vessels to convey the water were
wanting.
"There remained a duty to be fulfilled toward the dead, enjoined at once by piety, and the dread
of infection. It being impossible to inter so many thousand corpses, half-buried under the ruins,
commissaries were appointed to burn the bodies: and for this purpose funeral piles were erected between
the heaps of ruins. This ceremony lasted several days. Amid so many public calamities, the people
devoted themselves to those religious duties, which they thought were the most fitted to appease the wrath
of Heaven. Some, assembling in processions, sung funeral hymns; others, in a state of distraction,
confessed themselves aloud in the